


They're Hanging Me Tonight

by arthurmorgan-s-heart (Silverblind)



Category: Red Dead Redemption
Genre: Angst, Drabble, Gen, Post-Game(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-16
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-10-10 23:19:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17435396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silverblind/pseuds/arthurmorgan-s-heart
Summary: It's the noose for me - and that's the way it should be.





	They're Hanging Me Tonight

**Author's Note:**

> Also posted on my tumblr blog arthurmorgan-s-heart
> 
> Inspired by the song of the same name - just the title, really. The actual lyrics are unrelated.

Always knew I’d end up here.

Knew it from the moment I watched my father stand where I am now. Knew it from the moment I stole my first loaf of bread so I wouldn’t starve, knew it from the moment Dutch first put a gun in my hand. Sure have known it long enough to make my peace with it.

Then why am I still afraid?

You don’t live a life like mine and get to die in your bed. I ain’t civilized, never been, never wanted to be; knew I wouldn’t die in a civilized manner. And if a hangin’ isn’t the most savage thing left in this land that they say’s tamed, then I don’t know what is - a savage end reserved for savage men that don’t have a place in this world no more.

I climb the stairs to the gallows, and my feet are heavy as lead - guess no man can truly face his own death without fear, after all. I seen my fair share of hangin’, knowin’ it would be me up there one day - never doubted it for one moment. I’d seen men cry, laugh, beg, and scream as the noose was placed ‘round their necks, sometimes all at once. As I stand over the trapdoor that’ll soon open under me, I only feel a strange kind of impatience -  _ get on with it _ .

The sheriff is talkin’, but I can’t -  _ won’t  _ \- listen to what he’s sayin’. There’s a crowd come to see me die tonight, a sea of strange faces I ain’t never seen before in my life. There’s anger in their eyes, but it’s unfocused, hatred for hatred’s sake, and nothin’ more - they don’t know what I’m hangin’ for, and they don’t  _ wanna  _ know. They only wanna be told I deserve it. Lord knows I do.

I can still remember a time where bein’ where I am now wouldn’t have felt quite so final - but all them that coulda helped me are gone now; dead, or too far away to be any help. It’s better this way. Ain’t no one gonna miss me, and the world’ll be a better place once I’m gone.

If they coulda hanged me three times over I’m sure they would have - and I’d have deserved it, too. Done terrible things, all my life, all for a man who’d end up bein’ the worst of all of ‘em - worse than me, and I didn’t think that was possible. I know this, and yet, even as I stand in the last place I’ll ever stand, with rope ‘round my wrists and neck, I can’t think of a single thing I wouldn’t do all over again. They was family when the whole world had turned its back on me - and I still resent the world more than I do Dutch, somehow, despite everythin’ he’d done to me, to the gang. 

There’s things I regret, sure - I think about Mary, about Eliza, about Isaac, how all my life I’d wished things coulda been different. But all that robbin’, killin’? I’m a bad man, and bad men don’t regret those things.

I see the deputy reach for the lever. I look up at the sky - I don’t wanna see him do it. Don’t want it to be the last thing I’ll ever see. The stars are slowly comin’ out - a lovely sight to die to, I guess.

_ Lord, if there’s a life after death, let me be a bird, that I may be forever free. _

They’re hangin’ me tonight, and for the first time in my life, I’ll be leavin’ the world a better place than I found it.

  
  



End file.
